Sawbones 248: Dr. Price's Bad Ideas Published October 13th, 2018 Listen here on themcelroy.family
Intro (Clint McElroy): Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it.
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Justin: Hello and welcome to Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine! I'm your cohost, Justin McElroy!
Sydnee: And I'm Sydnee McElroy.
Justin: Happy Book Launch Week to you, Sydster.
Sydnee: Oh, likewise, Justin. This is a very exciting week.
Justin: It is an exciting week! Finally, after a year and a half of work, the book that you and I spent so much time writing, and your sister Teylor, uh… drew pictures for it—that's not the preferred term, I think—
Sydnee: No. Let's try "illustrated."
Justin: [snooty voice] Illustrated?
Sydnee: Mm-hmm.
Justin: Illustrated.
Sydnee: Mm-hmm.
Justin: Uh, it is available now! Uh, if you could find it. [laughs]
Sydnee: Yeah, so thank you, wonderful, amazing, supportive listeners for buying our book in such numbers that for a while it was hard to get.
Justin: It's still—
Sydnee: Well, it's still hard to get, but more are coming.
Justin: More are coming.
Sydnee: More are being delivered. More are being printed.
Justin: Yes, so thank you so much for your support. If you wanna get the book, if you haven't gotten it yet, bit.ly/thesawbonesbook. You'll find a bunch of different links. Even if a place says they're out of stock, go ahead and, like, put in your order, then as soon as they're there—
Sydnee: 'Cause they are literally getting sho—getting stock, like, today, tomorrow, in the next several days, and then even more are being printed beyond that, so—
Justin: But thank you so much.
Sydnee: —stock is coming.
Justin: And a lot of Barnes and Noble stores, physical stores apparently, do have these in stock. And, uh, if you're in the Huntington area, we got a signing on Saturday at 2 PM. You can definitely pick one up there, because you have to buy one there for that event, but you can do that 2 PM on Saturday at the Barnes—no, sorry!
Sydnee: And the Books-A-Million.
Justin: At the Books-A-Million in Huntington, West Virginia. Technically Barbersville, but whatevs.
Sydnee: That's right.
Justin: And then we're doing another one of those in Charleston on the 27th, and then New York on the 17th.
Sydnee: We'll be at the Barnes and Noble.
Justin: At the Barnes and Noble in Tribeca.
Sydnee: Yes.
Justin: So come out, see us. Thank you for your support. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But we are celebrating the launch of our book by doing what we do best: Sawbones: Back to Basics.
Sydnee: That's right, Justin. I can't take credit for finding this excellent topic. I usually am pretty good about sharing that credit. Uh—
Justin: Mm-hmm. [quietly] Usually.
Sydnee: —Terry tweeted this fella's name at me to look into, and I checked my email and both Malachi and Julie have recommended this as well, so thank you all for this topic.
I'm gonna tell you about a doctor named Weston Price.
Justin: Weston Price is a very doctorly name, I do have to say.
Sydnee: It is. Now, he is—actually, I should be clear. When I say "doctor," I mean doctor of dentistry. He is a dentist. Or was a dentist.
Justin: Ahh, yeah. I could tell from the, uh—the sneer in your voice—
Sydnee: No—
Justin: —that he wasn't a doctor like you.
Sydnee: Ju—
Justin: You can't stand dentists.
Sydnee: Ju—I have no—
Justin: Sydnee hates dentists.
Sydnee: —I have no beef with dentists.
Justin: Then why—when was the last time you went to a dentist?
Sydnee: That has nothing to do with my—like, me disliking dentists.
Justin: Raise your hand if it's over a decade. She's raising her hand, folks!
Sydnee: I am not.
Justin: It's up in the air.
Sydnee: I—I am—
Justin: She's crying. So ashamed.
Sydnee: More so than most people—
Justin: 'Cause she hates dentists!
Sydnee: —I am appreciative of dentists.
Justin: In theory.
Sydnee: Because in medical school, they don't teach you a lot about teeth. I am beginning to wonder if that's on purpose, because we don't wanna steal anything from the dentists?
Justin: I assume that they do teach you how should feel about dentists, Syd. [singing] You have to be taught to hate and fear—
Sydnee: No—
Justin: —[singing] you have to be taught from year to year, you have to be carefully taught!
And that's how Sydnee, uh, learned to despise dentistry.
Sydnee: Okay.
Justin: And its practitioners.
Sydnee: None of this is true. I love dentists. You know there are—
Justin: Not enough to go to one!
Sydnee: —there are dentists and dental hygienists—they are listening and they think you're serious. I love dentists. I am so appreciative of what you do, and dental health is incredibly important, and I am not gonna knock on Dr. Price because he was a dentist. I'm knockin' on him because of all the stuff that he did.
Justin: Mm-hmm. But you'll—you're—you're enjoying it because he was a dentist.
Sydnee: No. The divide between medicine and dentistry is called the historic rebuff, and that's an episode that we'll do eventually, 'cause that's an amazing name. But I have no rebuff. I will not rebuff dentists. They are wonderful.
But not so much Dr. Price, who lived from 1870 to 1948. He was a Canadian dentist, practiced a lot in Cleveland, Ohio, and if you—if you believe his followers today, because this stuff persists today, as we'll get into, he is the Isaac Newton of nutrition. [pauses] That's what they call him.
Justin: That's a good name.
Sydnee: Isaac Newton of nutrition.
Justin: I'd love to be Isaac Newton of nutrition, if the option was still available. I would love to sign up for that.
Sydnee: There are many in the dental field—and I am not in the dental field, but I will also be one of the people who now think of him as the patron saint of qua— crack—quack, excuse me—[holding back laughter] patron saint of quack dentistry. Because he was wrong… about some stuff.
So he may have started out as just a regular dentist, just doin' the dentist thing. Um, but he didn't end up that way. He was—there was a debate at the time, when he was practicing dentistry, about root canal therapy.
Justin: Okay.
Sydnee: Uh, before I get into that debate, do you—do you wanna explain what a root canal is?
Justin: Yeah. I've had one. It's sort of—the way—okay.
Sydnee: I had to look this up, 'cause again—I feel like maybe even doctors know less than the average person about dentistry!
Justin: They—they di—they… di—dig a hole—
Sydnee: Yeah.
Justin: —into your tooth, down the middle, and then they take out the tooth's guts.
Sydnee: Yeah, more or less. And then you put stuff back in.
Justin: Tooth stuff.
Sydnee: Like, inner substance—
Justin: Cotton, whatever.
Sydnee: No, it's like a rubbery—it's called [hesitantly] gutta-percha.
Justin: Gutta-percha?
Sydnee: Yeah.
Justin: Okay.
Sydnee: Which is like a tree. It's like a—it's like a resin, a rubbery substance from a tree.
Justin: Okay.
Sydnee: And they stick it down in there. So yeah, they dig out the infected or inflamed pulp and put the—the inert substance in there instead, and you do that because, again, a tooth is either infected for some reason or it's been, like, damaged in some sort of trauma and so it's all inflamed inside. Something like that, and it's causing you a lot of pain, right? Or, like, in the case of an infection, can make you really sick.
So, that's a root canal, and for a long time, if your tooth was jacked up… you know, medically speaking…
Justin: Mm-hmm.
Sydnee: … [holding back laughter] they would just yank it out, right?
Justin: Right.
Sydnee: Just go and, like—barber surgeons did that. You know, lots of people we've talked about in old-timey medicine shows—they would, like, put somebody up onstage and yank a bunch of teeth out as fast as possible so people could watch, 'cause… there wasn't TV yet.
Justin: 'Cause they're nasty. [laughs quietly]
Sydnee: But there were other, smarter dentists who said, "You know what? I don't think we should be pulling all these teeth out, because if you lose all your teeth, it's hard to eat."
And that's a major problem, actually. See, I do know some things about teeth. That is a major problem—
Justin: [laughs]
Sydnee: —as we get older. If you've lost your teeth and you, you know, don't have false teeth or dentures or anything, eating and nutrition can become a big issue in our elderly population, and so it's really important to keep your teeth healthy, and to keep your teeth, period.
Justin: Yeah.
Sydnee: So there had to be a better way, and root canals were the better way.
Justin: There has to be a better way.
Sydnee: Because with a root canal, you can save the tooth instead of just… diggin' it out of there.
Justin: Right.
Sydnee: But there were still people at this point in history who were nervous about it. There was some trepidation. Should we—
Justin: Some trepanation? No, that won't help your teeth!
Sydnee: [laughs quietly]
Justin: [holding back laughter] Don't—no trepanation! That's not necessary.
Sydnee: No, trep—ha ha. Trepidation.
Justin: Trepidation, okay. Got it.
Sydnee: But anyway—so, Dr. Price got into this debate and said, you know, "I'm kind of falling on the side that I think root canals are doing more harm than good. I think we should just be yanking all these teeth out," because what he believed is what he came to call the focal infection theory.
And what that meant is that when you do a root canal, you kind of open up pathways, like, by drilling down into tooth and removing stuff. You're opening up pathways for bacteria and germs and other organisms to get in and invade and hide.
Justin: Okay.
Sydnee: And you're opening up this way for secret infections to form in your mouth.
Justin: The most tantalizing kinds of infections. Scandalous.
Sydnee: [soft voice] Secret infections.
Justin: [soft voice] Indulgent.
Sydnee: Instead of secret confessions?
Justin: Yeah.
Sydnee: [soft voice] Secret infections.
Justin: [laughs quietly]
Sydnee: So they're hiding in your mouth, and as a result they can cause all kinds of diseases. So he was linking these perceived secret oral infections to systemic diseases, things like arthritis or anemia or acne, or all kinds of stomach and gut disorders, all kinds of GI tract problems.
He basically said that all this stuff could be traced back to a focal infection in the mouth, and root canals were opening people up to these
Justin: Hm.
Sydnee: So instead of doing a root canal he said, you know, the better thing to do is just pull the tooth out, and then you don't risk creating this focal infection.
Justin: Okay. That seems rational enough.
Sydnee: I mean, it s—like, the—if you don't know anything about dentistry, that sounds…
Justin: Wow, Syd. Okay.
Sydnee: Well, I mean…
Justin: Goin' a little hard, but that's fine.
Sydnee: Just saying! Then that sounds like, "Well, maybe that's true," but the thing is, it's not true. The focal infection theory is wrong.
Now, he published his works, and it was—there was a lot of controversy, because they were already debating how best to manage, you know, some interdontal disease, inside the tooth, and they—this created a lot of—a lot more people being worried about it. You know, being concerned. Like, "Maybe—oh, maybe we're on the wrong track. I don't know. This guy published all these papers, and he's sayin' that this is a bad idea."
Justin: I mean, honestly, if I had known he was a fellow author, I would have never agreed to besmirch him in this way. Us… authors…
Sydnee: [laughs quietly]
Justin: … have to stick together, you see.
Sydnee: Uh… I'm not gonna stick with this guy.
Justin: Okay.
Sydnee: So he—and he was—and these works that he published—so, he published Dental Infections and Related Degenerative Diseases, and Dental Infections: Oral and Systemic, and they were even, like, used as references in textbooks in the mid 1930s.
Justin: Hm.
Sydnee: So he made some headway with these ideas, this concept that a lot of human disease could be traced back to secret infections in the mouth.
Uh, the problem is that he was wrong, and most dental professionals knew this.
Justin: Hm.
Sydnee: So as quickly as these ideas were being adopted, they were kind of being… disputed and then rejected. So it's interesting—maybe dentists are just better at this than doctors, because you don't see, like, these ideas about the focal infection theory, like, invade dentistry and take root and hold on for years to come.
Like, it was really in the—at the same time in the 30s that people were starting to read his works that everybody was summarily saying, "No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. Don't pull teeth out. Don't do this. This is—this is a bad thing."
And people started, uh, really critiquing the work that he did, the studies that he did to try to prove these theories. Um, they were bad science. There were a lot of flaws in the design of his studies. He had a lot of technical limitations, and there were a lot of ways that he interpreted the data that wasn't completely accurate, coming to conclusions that you couldn't really make. They didn't' have control groups, in a lot of the studies? You know, a group that you didn't do something to to compare the group you did stuff to?
Justin: Mm-hmm.
Sydnee: Um, he—he did a lot of studies in rabbits. A lot of the stuff that he was basing this on was stuff he did in rabbits, and he would use really high, like, amounts of bacteria to create these infections that he could then treat and stuff. In his sample, in excessive doses that you wouldn't necessarily see.
And then also, like, there were all kinds of experimental biases, because people would have bacterial contamination, like, during tooth extractions as well, so—
Anyway, his studies were poorly designed. His conclusions were flawed. Everybody figured that out, and while he was going around pulling out everybody's teeth, everybody else said, "This isn't—no. No. We're not doing this."
So dentistry as a whole rejected it.
Justin: Mm-hmm.
Sydnee: Which is why we still have root canals, right?
Justin: Right.
Sydnee: Like, that persisted. So now, you have this problem, you go to the dentist, they're not just gonna yank your tooth out right away. They're gonna try to do a root canal, save the tooth, save your ability to keep eating. You know, preserve your nutrition forever.
Justin: Got it!
Sydnee: So if that was—
Justin: We—we fixed it! Wow!
Sydnee: Right!
Justin: That was easy.
Sydnee: I know!
Justin: Good job, everybody.
Sydnee: Dentists, right? Dentists are better at this, I think.
Justin: Dentists have it on lock.
Sydnee: But that wasn't enough… for Dr. Price.
Justin: Oh no.
Sydnee: Because if he wasn't going to make a mark for himself by convincing dentists to yank everybody's teeth out, he was gonna make a mark for himself some other way. So he started to research instead the connection between nutrition and dental disease.
And then again, his goal, just as it was with the focal infection theory—his goal was to link all this to illness as a whole, to health, to our general wellness and health.
So, it's not just about eating in a way that results in good dental hygiene. It's eating in a way that preserves your oral health, which will therefore prevent disease in the rest of your body, or manage disease, or treat disease, right?
Justin: Food—food as medicine?
Sydnee: Yeah. It's food as medicine. It's food as medicine for your mouth, and by way of your mouth, the rest of you. Does that kind of make sense?
Justin: Sure.
Sydnee: So he was trying to figure out what the ideal diet was to do this, and the way that he decided to figure this out was to travel the world… and basically catalog what people ate all over the world. I mean, he went everywhere. Um, from, you know, very urban societies, industrialized places, to tribal populations and, you know, people, like, all over the spectrum, on every continent. He went everywhere.
Justin: Sounds like—like, get a camera on this guy. You got a travel show goin'.
Sydnee: He took 15,000 photos of teeth.
Justin: The Phil Rosenthal of his time.
Sydnee: [laughs quietly] Uh, except he came back with 15,000 photos of teeth.
Justin: Mm-hmm.
Sydnee: Because what he would do is he would—
Justin: That, I—I would like to rescind my, uh—my offer. [laughs] On this television program. I don't think a bunch of still images of teeth is gonna be great TV.
Sydnee: Can you—can you imagine if you, like… broke into his house 'cause you wanted to, like, steal his TV, and you found 15,000, like—like a pile of 15,000 pictures of teeth?
Justin: "Oh, I—I've screwed up!"
Sydnee: How fast would you run?
Justin: "Oh, I've made—I've made a huge mistake."
Sydnee: [holding back laughter] How fast would you bolt?
Justin: "I'm so sorry. I've made a massive, massive miscalculation."
Sydnee: So he went—he interviewed people—
Justin: "Enjoy your possessions."
Sydnee: —he asked them about their diet, and then he took pictures of their teeth. Uh, and he began to come up with what he thought was, like, the ideal diet, based on how great a person's teeth were. Like, "The better their teeth were, the better their diet must be, the healthier must be, so I'm gonna come up with this great diet."
What he began to find was a theme. People in the less developed world, specifically, like, tribal populations, had better dental health. They had fewer cavities, and therefore he believed were probably healthier overall.
Now, I don't—I didn't get a sense that he was necessarily studying that, because he wasn't—he was a dentist, so his focus was oral health, but it was kind of the assumption that if your oral health—if you got your teeth in order, you must be really healthy otherwise.
Justin: Okay.
Sydnee: Um, so he began to theorize that specifically the Western diet was responsible for bad teeth, so he wanted to revolutionize the Western diet by taking it back to its… you know, primitive origins, I suppose.
Justin: Okay. Like—like what, exactly?
Sydnee: Well, I'm gonna tell you what his dietary program was and still is…
Justin: Oh no.
Sydnee: But first, let's go to the billing department.
Justin: Let's go!
*****
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Sydnee: Yes.
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Sydnee: [laughs]
Justin: [laughs] They can tweak it! They can twerk it if they want, it's America. [through laughter] It's—they sell directly to the consumer.
Uh, we have a Casper mattress in our home. It is an absolute delight, and I'm not just sayin' that. I adore Casper. I think they make a great product.
Sydnee: No, I do too. It's a wonderful mattress.
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Well, we were very excited this week to receive a piece of Away luggage. Away is a new sponsor here at Sawbones. Uh, Away makes great luggage at a lower price by, again, cutting out the middle man.
Folks, I feel bad for the middle men, 'cause they are getting the runaround here.
Sydnee: They're getting cut our everywhere.
Justin: They're getting cut out everywhere. How are they even making a living?
Sydnee: [laughs quietly]
Justin: Uh, anymore? These are great bags. We had them send a pink one for Charlie to check out, because we wanted to kind of see—we thought that would be a great fit for her. It's a hard case. It comes with a USB battery that you can plug in to charge your devices. A single charge of the Away carry on will charge your iPhone five times. There's a lock on it that you can obviously customize to whatever you want, and there's a lifetime warranty. If anything breaks, they'll fix it or replace it for you, for life. For life! That's—I mean, that's confidence.
Sydnee: That's a great deal.
Justin: That's a great deal! And speaking of great deals, you can get $20 off a suitcase when you visit awaytravel.com/sawbones and use the code "sawbones" at checkout.
You know, you think a lot about your house. And when you're traveling, your suitcase is like your house. That you… carry. 'Cause it's got all your stuff in it. So shouldn't you s—shouldn't you put as much thought into a suitcase as you do your house?
Hm. interesting. Let's think about that as we go to awaytravel.com/sawbones—
Sydnee: [laughs quietly]
Justin: —and use the code "sawbones" at checkout.
*****
Justin: So Syd, uh, you were gonna tell me about Dr. Price's… plan.
Sydnee: That's right. So—
Justin: To save us all.
Sydnee: —I'm gonna go through—there were a lot of points to this plan, and I'm not gonna go through every single one. I'm just gonna try to kind of hit some of the highlights.
Some of this stuff isn't, like, bad advice. There's a lot of—kind of what you might hear today. Eat whole, unprocessed foods. Sure.
Um, he was a big proponent of meat. He was all about eating, like, beef, lamb, organ meat, poultry, eggs—like, eat a lot of meat. He was all about that. And fish, he was all about fish. Big into, like, make sure that it's wild and that the water isn't polluted and that kind of thing.
Justin: Sure, right.
Sydnee: He was very much into dairy products, but he was insistent that this stuff should be raw. He was quite anti-pasteurization.
Justin: [snorts quietly] Okay.
Sydnee: Because, you know, then you get all those yummy germs out of there.
Justin: You get that good stuff.
Sydnee: So he was very much into the idea of raw milk. That is a theme throughout a lot of his work. Uh, animal fats are important, so lots of butter, lots of cream, lots of… lard.
Justin: [laughs]
Sydnee: That kind of stuff. Um, vegetable oils—he was big on cod liver oil specifically. Basically everybody should take it. He just thought it was the perfect… super food. They'd call it that. Their number one super food.
Justin: It gives you weird burps, right? Don't you get weird burps?
Sydnee: Any kind of fish can. Any fish oil.
Justin: Fish oil can.
Sydnee: But specifically cod liver oil was the one that he wanted everybody to use. Of course—I mean, again, like, good stuff, fresh fruits and vegetables. You can eat some whole grains, although he thought grains in general were not great, so…
Justin: Well, that's not… that far off, right?
Sydnee: Well, to the extent that, like, maybe grains are the reason we have human cancers.
Justin: [inhales] Well, that's maybe a little overzealous. [laughs]
Sydnee: I would say. Uh, big into fermented foods. Sure. That's fine.
Justin: Okay.
Sydnee: Um, had specific salts—like, one I found was, like, a specific Celtic salt that everybody should go find and buy?
Justin: Okay.
Sydnee: Uh, I'm not sure—obviously traditional sweeteners, not the fake stuff. Unpasteurized wine or beer.
Justin: Unpasteurized wine or beer?
Sydnee: Only unpasteurized wine or beer. Cook only in stainless steel, cast iron, glass, or enamel.
Justin: [snorts]
Sydnee: Use only natural, food-based supplements. Get plenty of sleep, exercise, and natural light. Sure.
Justin: Good, good, good, good, good.
Sydnee: Here's the last piece of—this is dietary advice. "Think positive thoughts and practice forgiveness."
Justin: That's good advice, though!
Sydnee: That's dietary advice.
Justin: That's good advice. You think positive thoughts, "I'm positively gonna eat good vegetables today."
Sydnee: I mean, I have no—I have no problem with thinking positive thoughts or practicing forgiveness. I think those are excellent things to do. I don't know what they have to do with your diet.
Justin: You forgive yourself for eating so much pizza. You think positively about the pizza you'll eat later. It makes perfect sense to me.
Sydnee: A lot of this diet was what was—what he called "The Primitive's Diet."
Justin: Hm!
Sydnee: "I want to eat like the primitives do," meaning less developed societies.
Justin: They all died. They all died so young.
Sydnee: So, the—it really—a lot of this did not take into consideration that in some cases, the—it wasn't that people were healthier. It's just different. Like, the health issues are different, and specifically he was going to populations that maybe had issues with undernourishment, with malnourishment. And that's a very different, like—a very different constellation of chronic diseases and problems that affect a community like that than one that is maybe, you know, suffering from an abundance of unhealthy foods, right?
Justin: Right.
Sydnee: Like, more like our Western society.
Justin: Right.
Sydnee: So he fell victim to what we would—what has been referred to as the— quoting—"Myth of the healthy savage."
So, the idea that people who are more in tune with nature live healthier because they live more like we—like our ancestors used to live.
Justin: Right.
Sydnee: And all of this is based on a lot of stereotypical, like, prejudicial beliefs about, you know, people who are native to certain parts of the world and indigenous cultures and things like that.
Justin: It's also tied to, like, the natural fallacy.
Sydnee: Precisely. The idea that if we just did things a lot more like we did 200 years ago, we'd all be better off.
Justin: Mm-hmm.
Sydnee: Which I think we have categorically proven is not…
Justin: Definitely true.
Sydnee: No, is not necessarily true.
Justin: And definitely not 500 years ago.
Sydnee: No.
Justin: You'd actually be better served if it was 600 years ago, [through laughter] rather than getting into those gnarly Middle Ages.
Sydnee: Yeah, really. Um, and so he thought we need to turn to a less advanced way of, like, growing food, of storing food, of preparing food, and then we'd all be healthier, which is where all, like, the raw stuff comes in. Raw meat in general, raw shellfish, raw anything is part of this program.
Justin: [queasily] Mmm.
Sydnee: Um, and then of course like I said, don't—don't pasteurize stuff. And it's important, when I throw that out there—like, raw milk was a huge cause of food borne illness until pasteurization became a thing, so "Drink raw milk" is very dangerous advice that I am not giving you. I realize that sente—I need to—Do not drink raw milk. Let me try that again.
Justin: Yeah, raw—like, kind of—I know there's a raw food movement, but I feel kind of like raw… a lot of stuff, I would prefer rather not. Like, it's very rarely used to connotate, like, "Good, ingest, go."
Sydnee: No—well, and I don't think the raw food movement—and I'm not an expert on the raw—I'm not—I've never—you know, that's not my lifestyle. I've never only eaten raw food, but I don't think they mean, "Go eat raw meat."
Justin: They probably—I would imagine meat is not a big part of the diet.
Sydnee: No. I'm—I think—I'm fairly certain that it's more of a—it's, like, a vegan diet, isn't it?
Justin: I don't—you know, listen.
Sydnee: Or a vegetarian? It's a plant based diet.
Justin: Listen. I love to cook broccoli, and I'm never gonna change.
Sydnee: I've seen videos of people making, like, raw food pizzas and different things, and I've never seen them—
Justin: [speaking close to the mic] That's… not… pi—you—c'mere. If you've ever made raw food pizza, pretend I'm grabbin' you by the cheeks!
Sydnee: I have no problem—
Justin: That's not—I'm squishin' your face.
Sydnee: —no problem with that—
Justin: That's not pizza! Look at me in the eye! That's not pizza! What, like Daniel Tiger does? "I put 30 cucumbers and 40 tomatoes on there, Mom! Is it pizza now?"
"No, Daniel. It's not."
You didn't make pizza, dawg! Oh, God. It drives me wild. Every pizza he makes on that show—which he does, like, every episode—
Sydnee: I think they're vegetarians, though! I've never seen them eat meat!
Justin: They are vegetarians, which, like—hey, everybody? I love it. I love what you're going for. They are tigers.
Sydnee: [laughs]
Justin: You're pl—I mean, please, they're tigers, though. Please. That's miseducation for our children, and their pizzas look so wack! [laughs] It's just green peppers!
Sydnee: It's a veggie rainbow, Justin.
Justin: It's a veggie rainbow! That's fine, Daniel! It's not pizza! You've been driven mad by your lack of meat [through laughter] in your tiger diet!
Sydnee: I—I have no problem if people want to eat raw food. I am saying, don't eat raw—don't drink raw milk. That is what I'm saying.
Justin: [simultaneously] Unless you're a tiger, and you're listening to our show.
Sydnee: And I'd be very careful with raw meat, but I'm one of those people who, like, wants it all cooked. I—I just—just cook it. Just cook it. Just—I don't wanna take any chances.
Justin: I have some cevich. From time to time, get a little cevich.
Sydnee: [simultaneously] Just cook it for me.
Justin: Does that count? Little ceviche?
Sydnee: Just cook it for me.
Justin: Yeah.
Sydnee: Yeah. Uh, so why does this matter now? So he came up with a wild diet and he had some thoughts about dentistry that turned out to be wrong.
Justin: They shuffled him off to the annals of time.
Sydnee: So why does this matter? So, Price developed what is called holistic dentistry. Now, holistic dentistry—which, like, I hate the—I hate when the word "holistic" gets used this way. Holistic is a good way to look at people when we're talking about, like, medical care or dental care, or healthcare in general. Like, to look at a whole person. Holistic is a good thing.
But then it gets used in something like this, and holistic dentistry, as far as I can tell, means, like, "Let's allow for these ideas that this guy had that are wrong."
Justin: Mm-hmm. Right.
Sydnee: And that's not holistic. That's wrong.
Justin: Let's try an assortment of things that work, and that don't. [wheezes]
Sydnee: Yes. So there was, like, a nonprofit that was established in 1952 to, you know, include holistic dentistry. And that wasn't a big… they have an archive of all of his works, but that wasn't a big deal.
The big deal is a foundation, the Weston A. Price Foundation, that was cofounded in 1999, 'cause a lot of his research was, like, resurfaced in the 90s, and then tossed around among various medical and dental circles, and nutritional circles as, like, "Look, this guy had this idea once, and everybody thought he was wrong, but hey, maybe we'll buy it anyway!"
And so this foundation was formed in '99, and it's going strong still. It's based on his research, and it has, like, 13,000 members now?
Justin: Sydnee, you sent me a link to the web page, and I'm dead now! I'm dead.
Sydnee: I'm worried, because if you look at their web page, it doesn't immediately—it is not immediately obvious that it is… it's all wrong. Like, if you read it and you know, you know it's wrong, but it—you know sometimes you look at a website and you go, "Okay, well they're—[laughs quietly] well, who made this? This is not real."
Theirs is a little better done than that. Um, which is a little disturbing. So, what does this foundation endorse? So, we've got his diet. Great. You got that diet.
But they go much farther than that. So, in addition to following this very—um, this very fat-filled diet—it's very fatty, the whole diet. It's got a lot of animal fats and things.
They also are anti-fluoride… why not.
Justin: Sure.
Sydnee: Okay. They believe high cholesterol—
Justin: Well, I mean, I can—okay, we both said "Why not—" no. That's… bad and wrong.
Sydnee: Okay, well I guess—I mean, as long as—we're gonna get into some—
Justin: Sydnee doesn't want to get a bunch more emails from fluoride people but, like, sorry. Sorry. Fluoride's good.
Sydnee: It was one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.
Justin: [mumbling simultaneously] Greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. Yeah.
Sydnee: Yes. Fluoride is good. They do not believe that. They think fluoride is bad. They that that, um, high cholesterol as you get older is good, and is associated with positive health outcomes.
Justin: [laughs]
Sydnee: Except sometimes it's not.
Justin: Hmm.
Sydnee: Not clear when, but then you should take artichoke, and that'll fix it.
Justin: Yeahh.
Sydnee: They're against mercury. Like, the amalgam fillings that have mercury. There's a lot of people who will tell you that those are causing, like, secret disease, you need to get them removed or you're gonna have… toxins, or something. And so they're—they're among those people.
They have some weird ideas about breastfeeding? Um, I got deep into these breastfeeding articles where they're basically arguing that breastfeeding sounds good and everything, but if Mom doesn't eat this kind of diet, then her milk is essentially useless. And so then she shouldn't breastfeed. So, a person should not breastfeed if they don't follow this diet, and then in that case, they actually recommend that you make baby formula on your own. Don't buy formula. That's what they say. If you're not gonna breastfeed, don't buy formula. Make homemade baby formula out of cow or goat milk… that is unpasteurized… to feed your newborn!
Justin: Ugh.
Sydnee: This is extremely dangerous, by the way.
Justin: Extremely dangerous.
Sydnee: I mean, this is beyond just, like, "Well, that seems wrong." This is is incredibly dangerous.
They obviously are gonna include a lot of homeopathic remedies in here. There's tons of different treatments, homeopathic treatments.
Justin: Oh my God. This website!
Sydnee: They have, uh—they have chelation therapy as one of the things they promote. They believe sunlight prevents melanoma.
Justin: What—can you just—
Sydnee: They blame—
Justin: —where's Anonymous when you need 'em to take somebody down?
Sydnee: —they blame autism on abnormal gut flora, and they tell you that if you just eat the right diet, you can cure your child's autism. Um, they, uh… are anti-vax.
You knew that was comin'. You knew that was comin'. "You do not need vaccinations because one, they're dangerous chemicals, and two, you can prevent all childhood diseases with the proper diet."
Justin: This—there is a… help—
Sydnee: I have so many more.
Justin: —there is a headline of "Help us make raw milk legal in the last seven states." You…
Sydnee: They have lots of calls to action on there. They have—under the vaccine section they have a whole area where you can, like, find out about vaccine laws that are being passed in different states, so you can call and yell at them if they're trying to make it harder to skirt vaccines. They also have advice on how to, like, get an exemption, a medical exemption. Um, basically how to lie! It's how to—it's how to, I mean, to fraudulently—
Justin: To lie.
Sydnee: —get your child out of vaccines.
Justin: To lie.
Sydnee: Yeah. They have, like, advice on that, and lawyers that you can hire to help you fight vaccines, because you want your child to get preventable diseases and be sick, I guess.
Um, they also have some things like, uh—they are big proponents of the idea that electromagnetic radiation is causing things like ADHD and autism, or at the very least that mercury is causing ADHD and autism, and electromagnetic radiation prevents us from excreting mercury?
Justin: How could you just spring this on me at the end of the episode? And this is, like, a real website. I'm looking at it. Westonaprice.org. It is amazing. What?!
Sydnee: So they—they tell you—they tell you—I thought you would like this, Justin. So, here's your protocol to lower your EMR exposure.
"Turn off WiFi at night for at least 12 hours."
I don't know what a cat5 or 6 ethernet cable is, but you're supposed to use those.
"Unplug all cordless phones. Keep all mobile devices six feet from children. Turn them off in the car. Don't use any wireless technologies, day or night, for two weeks when you start." It's, like, an EMR detox, I suppose.
Justin: Perfect, yes, yes, perfect, yes.
Sydnee: And finally—this is the best. "From the breaker box, turn off the electricity to your child's bedroom at night."
[pauses]
"Keep a flashlight in there."
'Cause they don't have electricity! [laughs]
Justin: [laughs]
Sydnee: Can you imagine how mad you'd be at your parents?
Justin: Oh my God, Sydnee.
Sydnee: "Where did you—you read this where—on a website?!"
Justin: "What?!"
Sydnee: Uh… there's just—they have—they believe measles is a cure for a kidney disorder called nephrotic syndrome, that if you give people measles it'll cure it.
Um, they think that strep infections will cure cancer. Uh, they believe with treating herpes with St. John's Wort.
Justin: [groans]
Sydnee: Spanish Fly for sunburns. [laughs]
Justin: Ugh.
Sydnee: Uh, don't get tetanus vaccines. Just clean the wounds really well and eat the right things. And they also believe that vaccination makes patients susceptible to HIV and hepatitis C.
Justin: [sighs]
Sydnee: Um… I could keep going. There's so many. Anyway—
Justin: Sydnee, let's don't.
Sydnee: I won't.
Justin: This is like all…
Sydnee: They have a—can I just tell you—they have a one—they have detoxes. They tell you that you don't need detoxes, and then they also have detoxes. And they say that—there's one—you know you might have one specific… intoxication— I don't know.
You—you're—you're toxic—if you have a consistent overly loud voice, a red face, hard and rigid pressure points, uh, strong body odor, strong pulse, and a thick yellow coating on your tongue. And if you have all that, then you have a toxin, and so to detox it, then you just—you eat this diet, and then you also need to have a lot of fermented drinks, and then some vitamin C and some dandelion.
Justin: This is hell. I'm in he—I'm—this is—I'm in actual hell.
Sydnee: And I'm assuming cod liver oil. Also, they do recommend coffee enemas, because of course they do.
Justin: 'Cause of course the do!
Sydnee: But don't drink coffee. They actually say coffee's really bad for you, unless you… squirt it up your butt. Then it's fine.
Justin: Then it's fine.
Sydnee: Then it's fine. So anyway, they are peddling this misinformation—the vaccine stuff just makes me… nauseous.
Justin: All the stuff!
Sydnee: But yeah, all of it. I mean, all of it does, but they're advocates against science. It's basically—I saw one comment, one critique of it—Science Based Medicine did a great—their website, they did a great, like, take down of this website.
But, uh, I saw one person say, "Basically, if you wanna know what to do for your health, look on this website and do everything the opposite. They just get it…"
Justin: Just completely…
Sydnee: "… completely wrong."
Justin: Maybe it's a prank? Is it maybe a prank?
Sydnee: Nah… uh, one, uh—Terry, who tweeted this at us to check it out, made the point that they get, like, 58 million hits or something—they get crazy hits. This website gets crazy hits! I mean, it's out there disseminating lots of misinformation at a high volume. All based on—I almost feel a little sorry for this Dr. Price, 'cause I don't think he bought all this. I don't think this—
Justin: He was just like—
Sydnee: —was his intended legacy. I think what he wanted was people to eat more, you know, animals—sorry if you don't like to eat animals, but I think that's what he wanted. I think he wanted you to eat a lot of meat, eat a lot of oil, and eat a lot of vegetables, and cook in a cast iron skillet, and think positive thoughts. And, like—
Justin: [laughs]
Sydnee: —I'm not gonna—
Justin: [laughs]
Sydnee: —I'm not gonna take the guy to task for that stuff. I don't know that he intended for his legacy to be all this… complete quackery.
Justin: Just complete nonsense.
Sydnee: Complete quackery.
Justin: Complete quackery. Thank you, Sydnee, for this infuriating, uh, uh, uh, offering. I appreciate you, uh, sharing it with us.
Sydnee: [holding back laughter] You're welcome.
Justin: Thank you to you for listening, uh, to our show. We hope that you have enjoyed it.
Sydnee: Get your flu shots!
Justin: Get your flu shots! Right now. Um, and you will be happy that you did. We got ours—we probably even waited a little bit longer than we should have, but that's life. The important thing is that we're getting 'em.
I wanna say thank you to The Taxpayers for the use of their song "Medicines" as the intro and outro of our program. Thanks to the Maximum Fun Network for having us as a part of their extending podcasting family.
Bit.ly/thesawbones book is where you can get our book. You can also come see us Saturday, uh, October 13th—that's tomorrow, if you're listening to this today— wow, this got confusing.
Books-A-Million in Huntington, West Virginia. On the 27th we'll be in, uh—
Cooper: Ahh! [heavy baby breathing]
Justin: —Charleston, and the 17th—
[mic jostling noises in the background]
Justin: —I don't know why I keep doin' them in this order. Our child is now eating the windscreen. This infant is eating the windscreen. This is parenting at its finest.
That's gonna do it for us, folks, so until next week, my name is Justin McElroy.
Sydnee: [holding back laughter] I'm Sydnee McElroy.
Justin: As always, don't drill in your head!
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